Images and talk of catastrophes are pervasive in today’s world. Much discussion of the subject ignores issues of social justice and is not very favourable to a left-wing perspective. Yet the spectre of catastrophic climate change haunts the future. Climate change is wreaking destruction on many, is getting worse and poses a potential threat to life on the planet. This raises many serious questions about how the Left should respond.

On December 3, the Vancouver Ecosocialist Group put on an event, “Strategies to Fight Climate Change.” We are republishing the speech by VEG member Gene McGuckin. A report on the event and links to videos of all the speakers’ talks is online here — NSW

“The disaster at Lac-Mégantic cannot not be resolved by a strict inquiry, individual accusations, some superficial regulatory modification and false promises of security. This episode is not just a technical problem, but is a springboard for social mobilisation, for political action aimed at both ecological transition and the liberation from the yoke of unscrupulous big business and their accomplices in the Canadian State.”

Québec has just experienced the most brutal ecological catastrophe of its history. On July 6, 2013, a train loaded with 72 cars carrying crude oil derailed during the night. It exploded in downtown Lac-Mégantic, a small Eastern Townships municipality of 6000. A series of explosions and a fire completely destroyed more than 30 buildings including the municipal library, the town’s archives, heritage buildings, businesses and residences. Police have confirmed that 50 people were killed by the blast.

This is the second part of a two-part article on ecological politics in BC. The first part, on the provincial election, is here.

The dust has settled on the May 14 provincial election in British Columbia, with Christy Clark’s Liberals once again forming a clear majority government. However, the struggle to stop pipelines and the destructive impact of resource extraction megaprojects remains a very hot issue which is not about to go away. Under the Liberals, we can expect a big push for mega-resource development, with a big focus on exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) to Asia along with an austerity agenda with respect to social and environmental protection programs.

Many people were caught off guard by the results of the provincial election in British Columbia on May 14. Prior to the election, the New Democratic Party (NDP) held a large lead in the polls. The incumbent Liberal government seemed in major disarray, and most people assumed the result was a foregone conclusion. The NDP campaigned on the full expectation that it would form the next government.

Can you explain what’s happening in Canada with the tar sands pipelines, what they are, and what they’re going to do?

It really starts with Canada’s rulers. They have a dream that Canada is going to become the new world oil superpower. The oil that is locked up in Canada’s tar sands is greater in quantity than all the conventional oil reserves in the world put together. The tar sands could make Canada a rival to Saudi Arabia on the world oil market.

Tom Mulcair has been the leader of the federal New Democratic Party for more than eight months now. His leadership has largely been as expected: solid, competent and moderate. Mulcair has continued Jack Layton’s strategy of trying to supplant the Liberals as the middle-of-the-road alternative to the Harper Conservatives. It’s not a particularly inspiring strategy and, looking toward the likely coronation of Justin Trudeau as the next leader of the Liberal Party, it’s not a foregone conclusion that it will be a successful one. And supplanting the Liberals, even if that is solidified, isn’t necessarily sufficient to defeat the Conservatives. Unless the Conservatives really implode or somehow manage to alienate their carefully cultivated base of supporters, they are going to be difficult to defeat in the next election.

This article is Part 2 of a 2-part series, and is the basis of a presentation at the Historical Materialism 2012 conference in Toronto [http://www.yorku.ca/hmyork/]. Part 1 can be found here. The authors are both based in the United States, and thus use the term “tribal nations” and American Indians (Indigenous peoples in Canada refer to themselves as “First Nations”). – NSW

A crowd estimated at 250,000 people or more wound its way through Montréal April 22 in Quebec’s largest ever Earth Day march. They raised many demands: an end to tar sands and shale gas development, opposition to the Quebec government’s Plan Nord mining expansion, support for radical measures to protect ecosystems, and other causes. And many wore the red felt square symbolizing support to the province’s students fighting the Liberal government’s 75 per cent increase in post-secondary education fees over the next five years. The Earth Day march was the largest mobilization to date in a mounting wave of citizen protest throughout the province.

By Dave VaseyFrom August 30 to September 3, a Tar Sands Action took place at the White House in Washington, DC, with solidarity actions in a number of places across North America, and at Canadian and US embassies in a number of places around the world.

Humanity is facing a severe and worsening food crisis. Three billion people, nearly half of the world’s population, are malnourished. Over a billion suffer from “continual and severe hunger” while millions die each year because they lack access to even the most minimal amount of food. Every five seconds a child dies due to hunger or hunger-related diseases.